My husband and I attended a timeshare presentation at the Westgate Smoky Mountain Resort in order to get free tickets to Dollywood. After several hours (90 minutes my foot) we agreed to buy a timeshare due to the fact that with our timeshare we would get 12 "getaways" every year through Interval International. Our salesperson, Angie, repeatedly told us how we could get a 1 bedroom unit for $199/wk, a 2 bedroom unit for $299/wk, and so-on up to a 4 bedroom for $499. She even wrote this down on a napkin or other scrap piece of paper (hmmm, I wonder why?). She reepeatedly had us browse through the Interval catalog to see all the beautiful resorts available (based on availability, of course). Then she went into how we could sell these "getaways" and use the money to pay our monthly timeshare payment or get a little extra cash. Went over and over this. When my husband got cold feet and got up to leave, she had her manager come over and tell us how his girlfriend just made their monthly payment and put extra money in their pocket by selling a trip to Hawaii. So we agree to buy this thing. Our closing officer goes over the getaways again writing down "$299-450/wk any size - any time". Now, this discrepancy should have thrown a major red flag but we assumed the differnce in price was due to taxes and fees.
Well, once we get home and our ten day cancellation period ends and our Interval International materials arrive, we discover that is says plainly that members are not to sell the getaways for cash! Also, most of the beautiful resorts are never available and the ones that are cost a lot more than the rates we were quoted. My husband called Interval and told them what we had been told and they flat out told him Westgate had lied to us.
We have contacted Westgate repeatedly and they refuse to address the fact that their salespeople told bold-faced lies.instead they instruct us to contact Interval.interval didn't lie to us about anything! Westgate did.
This has been a total nightmare! Now we are stuck with a timeshare we can't afford to use and our Interval membership is over (OH, yeah, you have to pay hundreds of dollars to re-enroll every year) and we have no more getaways, not that we could use them anyway!
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